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‘Spider-Man’ Producers Say Delay Is Justified

The producers and director of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” defended on Friday their decision to postpone the musical’s opening by another five weeks, saying that a show of this unprecedented complexity could not unfold according to Broadway tradition. New productions usually have four weeks of preview performances to work out kinks and not the record-setting 15 of “Spider-Man” before critics review it.

But several veteran producers were quite critical of the move, saying “Spider-Man” was setting a bad precedent by having audience members pay $140 to $275 for the best seats at a show that is still undergoing script, music, sound and lighting work, and that still lacks a big closing number. Some, breaking the customary silence that producers tend to extend to their colleagues, also charged that the delay was a ploy to make more money before critics offered their judgments.

As it stands, “Spider-Man” will have had roughly 110 preview performances before its new March 15 opening. The record for a musical was 71, set in 1991 by “Nick & Nora,” and the record for a play was 97, set in 1969 by “A Teaspoon Every Four Hours.” (That play, starring Jackie Mason, closed immediately after its opening night.) By its March 15 opening, if that holds, “Spider-Man” will have run longer in previews than some Broadway musicals have run in their entirety this season, like “The Scottsboro Boys” (94 total performances) and “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” (99).

Michael Cohl, the lead producer of the $65 million “Spider-Man,” the most expensive musical in Broadway history, said the creators were still working on a splashy ending, including a major new flying sequence that was tested on Friday for state safety inspectors. He said the show’s composers, Bono and the Edge, of the band U2, were reworking music and lyrics. (Bono, however, has left New York; his return date is unclear.) And Mr. Cohl disputed the accusation that the opening-night delay — the fifth — was a tactic to gin up more publicity and sell more tickets. Despite bad press, “Spider-Man” was last week’s highest-grossing Broadway show.

“The best idea to market the show would be to open,” Mr. Cohl said in a telephone interview. “Our view is the same as Ernest and Julio Gallo: ‘It’s simply, no opening before its time.’” (A similar phrase was made famous by the winemaker Paul Masson.)

“Listen, this is a very different kind of Broadway show: a rock ’n’ roll circus drama, a piece of action theater,” he continued. Referring to the show’s Tony Award-winning director, Julie Taymor, he added: “A lot of theater people thought Julie was nuts when they heard what she was doing with ‘The Lion King,’ before anyone saw the final product. We’re not bound by old expectations of when to open or not to open. We’ll open when the show is ready to open.”

Mr. Cohl and the show’s other lead producer, Jeremiah Harris, said they had not seriously considered more drastic moves like putting the show on hiatus; Mr. Cohl estimated the creators needed about 90 hours of more work and rehearsals, much of which would be on the ending. Mr. Harris said that the creators needed audience members seeing the show to gauge laughter, applause and silences — and then make fixes accordingly — while Mr. Cohl said that the show was selling extremely well and that audience members were enjoying themselves over all.

“Our sales are strong, they continue to be strong, and that’s the best news of all,” Mr. Cohl said. “I think that says something about what’s happening in the theater every night. We want the show to be great, and we believe we can get to that point while we continue to hold performances.”

Ms. Taymor, in a separate phone interview, said that she was “finessing and finishing off some major elements of the story” and clarifying parts of Act II, which some audience members have criticized on theater blogs, Twitter and Facebook.

“I’m not changing the story, I’m trying to make it better,” Ms. Taymor said. She added that characters like the spider villainess, Arachne, and the so-called Geek Chorus of narrators, as well as a number entitled “Deeply Furious” that involves several female spiders dancing in high heels, would remain in the show with refinements, despite much drubbing by the public.

Usually such details are not part of the cultural conversation beyond Broadway insiders, but “Spider-Man” has broken wide across the public, largely because of the popularity of the comic-book hero at its center, the involvement of Bono and Edge and the recent injuries to four of the show’s performers. Ms. Taymor, for her part, said she was trying to block out all of the public and news media attention on “Spider-Man,” which has become a staple of late-night comedy and was discussed excitedly this week by Glenn Beck on his radio program and on “Morning Joe” on MSNBC.

But for all the enthusiasm that those radio and television hosts have exhibited toward “Spider-Man,” some veterans of Broadway show making expressed bewilderment over the delays.

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“What the ‘Spider-Man’ people are doing is completely cynical,” said Jeffrey Seller, the Tony Award-winning producer of “In the Heights” and “Rent.” “It’s an end run around an actual opening night that would shine a tremendous amount of negative light on their superhero, while instead they’re riding on all the nonreview press the show is receiving because of its delays.

“With eight performances a week, you can only rehearse on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays for four hours each because of union rules and crew work, unless you want to pay overtime,” Mr. Seller continued. “If you want to write a new three-minute number, stage it, orchestrate it and tech it, the whole process takes at least a week. If they were serious about improving the show, they would shut down and do the work. But that would cost money.”

Emanuel Azenberg, another Tony-winning producer, has mounted shows for decades that had long preview periods and short ones. But he said “Spider-Man” had become a watershed.

Ms. Taymor justified the delays by saying that the work being done was the same that most shows do during out-of-town runs, which “Spider-Man” did not have. “In a way,” she said, “we’re still out of town, and we’re coming in for our five weeks of previews starting on February 7,” formerly opening night.

Some theatergoers also expressed exasperation on Friday. “This is the second time I thought I had tickets to see a frozen production, only to learn that I’m only going to see another preview,” said Steve Loucks, who writes about theater on his blog, SteveonBroadway. “They need to reconsider what they’re charging for preview tickets.” Years ago, Broadway previews cost less.

Several New York theater critics expressed chagrin on Friday that a musical had been running for 15 weeks of previews but that they had been unable to offer reviews that might inform theatergoers before they bought tickets to it. A few critics have published reviews, though; the “Spider-Man” team has said that critics should not review until invited to the production.

Joe Dziemianowicz, the theater critic of The Daily News, wrote a column on Friday that asked, in the headline, if audiences and critics were “being played for suckers” by the producers, though he added in an interview that he was not sure when he would review the show.

“One concern I have is that I can see having reviews come out by dribs and drabs, which just dissipates the impact of a critical consensus,” Mr. Dziemianowicz said. “It wouldn’t surprise me if the producers want that.”

The Associated Press theater critic said he would wait until invited to review; The Village Voice critic said he was inclined to wait; and The New York Post’s critic said she would be conferring with her editors.

Asked if The New York Times would review “Spider-Man” before press performances in March, Jonathan Landman, the paper’s culture editor, said: “We’re thinking about it. When a show seems comfortable with endless previews, then you have no choice but to think seriously about when to review it.”

A version of this article appears in print on January 15, 2011, on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: ‘Spider-Man’ Producers Say Delay Is Justified. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe